I agree a lot with Blovski's comments. The non-piety costs of Absolution aren't trivial. I lost a Super-absolved Dragon Isles run because I ran out of ways to clear curse stacks and to level up. I probably would have been okay if I had been more reasonable about how hard I Absolved.

Rogues are always going to break if they are allowed to circumvent their health issue while also stacking damage bonuses. Heal stacking is already weakly supported and I'd rather accept that the Rogue is going to be a bit wonky than chase health stacking into a corner.

Anyone try a Purist Orc Rogue? It's not actually all that good. If you find Glowing Guardian, Earthmother, or JJ in a timely fashion you can make it work, but there are lots of times where it just doesn't. I had an Orc Rogue who got Dwarven Gauntlets at level one, but still couldn't tank a hit from most of the bosses. It was a total shut out.

The classic Dwarven Rogue will consistently work on any map while having non-insane damage, but he doesn't get much attention because most of the balancing discussion is centered on hyper-prepped runs.

Earthmother can also give similar health boosts at a similar level and at a lesser cost of popcorn, while also being easier to escape from, but she doesn't see much use in VICIOUS because the plant spam is terribad on all but the most open of maps. I'm hoping that he new VICIOUS totem will open the field up for her a bit.

I agree with both of you guys - but I hope the Absolution thing doesn't go back to where it was, because it really worked good enough as the only thing besides a protection spam you take from GG with just about anything.

And after all those "absolve everything that moves" runs, I'm not even sure about the complaints about it not looking too hot after lvl 4 - sub vicious you don't really need enlightment. Sure you could invest your time elsewhere for greater benefit, but the old absloution took no time investment whatsoever. Might not've been the most powerful boon combination but was certanly the least effort intensive...

How about if absolution scaled slower, but other boons, except enlighment, also gave health per pop? I know I was underusing them, and we all might be too used to the super-efficent way absolution used to work and can't really immagine GG working any other way...

Second boss was Tomithy, whom I flattened at level 5 or 6 with health restoration alone.Now, that's not a good drac dungeon : p

Attempt the second - Warmonger Parched Dinging etc. (Unstoppable - I didn't get the badge, not sure why but if I missed something I could've killed it) Human Drac Paladin on Magma Mines. Whurgarbl instead of Dragon Shield. Losing the resistances made the early game trickier (got 2 lifesteals instead of Blood Shield) but the late game was still a happy rollover.

On the warmonger front, I nailed Vicious Western Jungle on the first try with a Warmonger Orc Taurog Paladin. Used the lifesteal sword to be able to get in two hits/protection + potions bout. Tikki and Mystera desecrations to finish him gave the boss a trait list longer than the screen :p

Is it just me that finds on viciousised runs it's usually easier just taking on a boss at level 6 than getting to a reasonable level to fight them?

Blovski wrote:Is it just me that finds on viciousised runs it's usually easier just taking on a boss at level 6 than getting to a reasonable level to fight them?

Yep. Even earlier with ding! setup and goblins.

EDIT: It was one of the most infuriation things for me when I found out how people are beating the original demonic library - nothing in the game ever suggested that going against a lvl 10 at lvl 4 was somethign I was supposed to do. Especially in a dungeon where everything was tougher! Why didn't anyone explain this from day one, if this was what the endgame required?

Edit: - Goblin Sorcerer (Mystera Cb) took out venture cave (a few times) and doubledoom (bosses were eays though). I'm really liking him, allthough his resources are finite. Although if there's a dungeon which has him scraping the botom of the barrel besides Slime Pits, I've yet to find it.

I'm also missing Hex and Creeplight in the sub-vicious category.

Also - IMAWAL gives off 2 gold when you break up a statue. If you're spamming endiswall for Mysterea piety after you've allready bricked stuff 5-6 stuff up - that's a crystall ball hit or so...

Ehhh - Creplight Ruins took the fight out of me. I took 4-5 tries with the goblin bloodmage, and I only managed it when I changed my strategy. Goblin BM Mysterea with fabulous treasure (massive buyout - prepped the alchemist but didn't need him). I ran into bloody sigil and fire heart so I could actually regen-fireball-fight a lvl2 and a lvl3. Took Mystic Balance and Refreshment, picked up the blue bead and very carefully killed the first form, used dodge + whoopaz on the second form (and 3 weakenings, including a desecrate EM one - otherwise no dice), and fireballed the last form to death with resources lft over (but very carefull play overall, except I explored the entire map using B2P and just ran out of blackspace below).

Anyway, new bloodmage is tricky on vicious difficulty and takes a bit of a shift in perspective.

Creeplight ruins - I'm not sure, maybe it's all intentional and everything, but you don't get any XP for the guys who revive (fair enough), but you also don't get any XP for the boss forms. They're not too bad HP wise (the later two don't seem to increase when you go vicious), but you have less gold and less XP in the dungeon, and it's rather tough. I remember devs saying, way back when, that they wanted creeplight to be a real test for the players, but as it stands they seem to be harder than hard halls of steel (you get the orb there).

Also, I'm not sure whether the shades were ment to be a boon or a hazard...

And Hex just went down, and if I'm not mistaken I just got all of the sub-vicious ones! Pokemon! Goblin Sorcerer, other boss Wraith, bunch of weakenings for stheno (had her at 57%, dodged and whoopazed her for the first hit).